When beer drinkers in Britain go to the pub, what they want is a pint. They do not want a half-liter. Ever. But the European Union had imposed a 2009 deadline that would have forced an end to the use of imperial units and required conversion to metric. But Tuesday, the European Parliament rescinded the rule and will allow Britain to retain its measures. "It's a victory for common sense," said Minister for Europe Caroline Flint. It is also a victory for British companies, who would have had to spend untold amounts to change their labeling practices.

This means that half of the top 10 searches were for things that just required adding .com to the search term. "It's a little redundant, obviously, but clearly it happens a lot," Google Canada spokesman Andrew Swartz told Toronto's Globe and Mail. And that doesn't begin to address why someone would Google "Google."

EBay sells a lot, but not Dante's soul

Dante Knoxx, 24, can sell his soul if he wants to, but he can't do it on eBay. The auction site took down the Bournemouth, England, man's listing since it did not meet the requisite of being a physical item. Details. Knox set the starting bid at $37,600 but offered a "Buy it now" of just more than $1-million. Knoxx said the auction generated interest, but no bids. "Which is a real shame," he told the Daily Mail. Probably just that everyone was waiting until the last minute. He said he was driven to the idea because he was fed up with life and mundane work.

People and animals

There is something weird about this dog

Zhang, a dog-loving man in Tunkou, China, paid about $90 for a Pomeranian pup. But he found the dog hard to tame. It bit him a lot. And it didn't sound much like a dog. "It can't bark but instead makes little em em noises," he told the Wuhan Evening Post. Well, that's weird. Then its tail kept getting longer. And it got worse. "The dog became very smelly. Even when we gave it a daily shampoo bath, the smell was still strong." He asked some animal experts what to do, and upon examination, they determined that Zhang's dog was actually an arctic fox. Well, there's your problem. Zhang donated the animal, a protected species, to the zoo.

Bears may get their own cop in Alaska

The state Assembly in Anchorage, Alaska, is considering a plan to hire a new "bear cop," who would be deputized to deal with bears that roam too close to homes, parks and businesses in the city, according to the Anchorage Daily News. If approved, the officer would be authorized to use air horns and rubber bullets to drive the bears back into the wild and would have the option of deadly force. Despite the fact that they live there, the bears will not be given a vote in the matter.

Compiled from Times wire services and other sources by staff writer Jim Webster, who can be reached at jwebster@sptimes.com.